If You Know You Know – Pusha T

Back when he was still one-half of Clipse, Pusha-T dazzled listeners of the Virginia duo’s mixtape series We Got It 4 Cheap by annihilating popular beats of the day. The project’s sole criticism was that the production was already so good, it could carry anyone. DAYTONA, copiloted by hip-hop production genius Kanye West, upends that conceit, with contemporary boom-bap built from luscious soul samples that would swallow a lesser MC. With Pusha at the absolute top of his game, DAYTONA is somehow more than the sum of its parts, a fact the rapper acknowledges proudly on “The Games We Play”: “To all of my young n****s/I am your Ghost and your Rae/This is my Purple Tape.”

Get this Stereobuzz music tip from the Hot Songs feed at iTunes